The rustic appearance of log houses has long held a nostalgic appeal for many persons in this country. Log homes, however, have a number of disadvantages, not the least of which is the ecologically undesirably necessity of cutting down a large number of trees to obtain the legs. The horizontal positioning of logs on top of each other and holding them in position has been difficult. Additionally, Insulating a log home poses special problems.
One attempted solution to these problems, illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,238, has been to form semi-cylindrical hollow logs having a flat face and a curved outer skin of simulated wood grain and fill the interior with insulating material, e.g., foamed resin, wood chips or sawdust-glue, almost inevitably creating air pockets not reached by the filling material. The flat faces of such half logs are then splined together and glued or fastened (by some undisclosed means) to vertical supports. Alternatively, the flat faces can be attached to each other to form a structure resembling a full log; such logs can then be stacked horizontally and apparently maintained in position by gravity. While solving some of the problems involved in the building of log homes, simulated logs of the type just described are inconvenient to manufacture, and attaching them to vertical supports is difficult.